The Circle – March 10-11

Welcome to the Circle, the first women-only gaming event held at Mongoose Publishing’s HQ!

The intent of this event is to provide a safe, comfortable environment where female gamers can meet other female gamers and enjoy a weekend of RPGs, miniatures, board, and card games – if it belongs on the tabletop, you will be welcome to play it here!

This is a free event with no entrance fee and while the odd Mongoose game will be played, there will be no hard sell during the day. Just come along and enjoy all the games on offer!

Where

There are free car parks within a hundred yards of our office (don’t park on the street outside, that is not free). Once you are in the area, look for Iceland – we are directly opposite, on the first floor above the bed shop. The entrance is round the side of the building!

We will be open from 10am to 6pm on both days (you are welcome to come to either or both days). If you are GMing a game, you will be welcome to arrive at 9:30am to begin setting up.

Who Can Come?

In a nutshell, anyone who identifies as female is welcome to the Circle. Men are respectfully requested not to enter the building during the event (only Mongoose’s female members of staff will be present). If they are responsible for transport, we believe they will find a lot in Swindon to keep them occupied during the day!

Registration

While this is a free event, we would like to know how many of you are coming and what type of games you are hoping to play. If you are intending to come, please send an email to msprange@mongoosepublishing.com stating:

What day you are coming (or whether you will be here for both days)

How many will be coming with you

What games you wish to play

What to Bring

Other than yourself, you really do not need to bring much!

Dice, pencils and pencil sharpeners are always handy at these events, along with any games you wish to introduce to others.

We have a small tuck shop here at Mongoose which is very reasonably priced, and there are plenty of food outlets on the same street, as well as two supermarkets. So long as you do not make a mess, you are welcome to eat at the gaming table.

The Weekend’s Structure

For this event, we are intending to keep things fairly flexible in terms of games and gaming. It is likely that games will be run in the morning, with a break for lunch, and then you will have a chance to play a different game in the afternoon. However, if you wish to stick with the same game all day (or across both days), you will be more than welcome!

The Mongoose staff will be running games of Traveller (a sci-fi RPG), along with the Firefly and Talisman boardgames. We will also have some volunteer GMs on the day to run a variety of other games.

However, we encourage you to bring your own games and introduce others to them during the event. There will be plenty of tables available for everyone.

Upon arriving, several games will already be set up ready for you to join. Simply pick the game you want to play and join in, or grab a spare table and start setting up your own. A Mongoose staff member will be on hand to collar gamers and bring them to you!

The following games are among those that will be played over the weekend:

Traveller: Deepnight EndeavourThis adventure takes place aboard a derelict exploration vessel which the Travellers must enter to locate fuel. With no way to get home, they discover there are survivors, and that the ship has taken aboard a malevolent entity seeking to reach an inhabited planet. The Travellers might simply try to escape or they could attempt to destroy the entity, but they will face opposition from the original crew as well as the entity itself.

Bluestockings
A GM-light storygame about being the first women to study at Oxford University. It is 1880, and you are about to join the second cohort of students to enrol at Somerville Hall in Oxford. You will not be officially members of the university, you will get no degree at the end of your studies, and there are many people who believe it is foolish, wasteful or even dangerous to educate women, but you are going anyway. There are academic challenges ahead, but also social ones. Will you be called home early to help support your family? Will you fall foul of the restrictions placed on women at Oxford? Or will you just fall in love with someone while you’re there?

Doctor Who: Urban Sprawl
There’s been a fatal stabbing outside a nightclub in Leeds. What’s that got to do with you? Well the murder victim doesn’t seem to be human…

Doctor Who: Cold WarIt’s the mid 80s and the height of the Cold War. UNIT has a tricky diplomatic mission: the Soviet Army has discovered something weird in Afghanistan. You must investigate without riling up the Soviets, annoying the CIA or accidentally starting WW3.

Closing Doors
When one door closes, another opens, or so the saying goes. All through our lives we make choices. Some turn out well, and others not so well. But what if you could go back and make another choice? Change one of those choices; open a door you left closed and always wondered about? This is a game about a group of old university friends, meeting at their usual holiday cottage for another annual (more or less) reunion, who find themselves jumping through alternative universes. How differently could their lives have turned out? How might those small moments have changed the trajectories of careers, families, relationships? And what’s causing them to jump? Will they get the chance to choose which door to leave open, and which to shut forever?

The Role Play Haven

The Role Play Haven will also be present during the weekend with their female members.

The Role Play Haven is a non-profit Community Interest Company (CIC), focused on delivering an excellent gaming experience, while raising money for charity.

They have branches in Lewisham, Stratford and Archway, and play games ranging from the classic Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, to more recent publications, such as Star Wars: Edge of the Empire; Star Trek Adventures; or new age indie games like Fiasco and Apocalypse World. With at least half a dozen tables to choose from at each branch, you’ll always find something to suit your gaming needs.